This slide-lecture survey course is designed to give both art majors and non-majors an introduction to the myriad forms and concerns of art from the 1960s to the present. We will begin by examining the rise of pop and minimal art, and the challenge these movements—along with the earthworks, conceptual art, and performances that followed them—posed to the idea of modernism and the traditions of painting and sculpture. The question of postmodernism will be important to the course both thematically and chronologically. The second half of the course will focus on the issues raised by the return to representation in painting, by photography and other technologies of reproduction, by new media and genres like video art and installation, by shifts in concern regarding audience and public art, and by increased pluralism and globalism and their impact on our definitions of mainstream and avant-garde. No prerequisites. This course is available as a distribution requirement. P/N permitted only if course is not used either as a general distribution or departmental requirement.

Morris Louis
Alpha Alpha
acrylic resin on canvas
1960
105x151 in
private collection